The mask is off. For years, Republicans have invited anti-immigrant organizations, like Tanton network groups Federation for American Immigration Reform and Center for Immigration Studies, to testify at congressional hearings, where “they are positioned as experts on immigration,” complete with folders and suits and wonky-sounding language to smooth over their radical, anti-immigrant views. But now the mask is truly, truly off.
BuzzFeed News reports that included in an email from the Justice Department to immigration court employees—including immigration judges—this week was a link to a blog post from white nationalist website VDARE, “an anti-immigrant hate site that regularly publishes works by white supremacists, anti-Semites, and others on the radical right,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The blog post attacked judges by name, “with racial and ethnically tinged slurs and the label ‘Kritarch,’” said National Association of Immigration Judges Union President Ashley Tabaddor.
”Tabaddor said the term kritarchy is a reference to ancient Israel during a time of rule by a system of judges,” BuzzFeed News continued. “’VDare’s use of the term in a pejorative manner casts Jewish history in a negative light as an Anti-Semitic trope of Jews seeking power and control,’ she wrote.” The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which sent the email, pointed the finger at an outside party, claiming the email was “compiled by a contractor and the blog post should not have been included. The Department of Justice condemns Anti-Semitism in the strongest terms.”
But BuzzFeed News reports that the email, sent as part of a “morning news briefing,” also summarized the blog post in addition to including the link. The fact is that racists like Stephen Miller have had long associations with anti-immigrant hate groups going back years, when Tanton groups were helping then-Sen. Jeff Sessions and his then-aide Miller derail comprehensive immigration reform. Now with their friend Donald Trump in the White House, those same radicals are empowered and emboldened, infiltrating top government agencies on down.
“Trump has stacked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the State Department with former staff and leadership from FAIR, and CIS mostly in positions that do not require congressional confirmation,” activist and author Julissa Arce wrote last year. Since then the administration has become only more bold, possibly illegally installing Ken Cuccinelli, a racist who once compared immigrants to rats, at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency that’s supposed to help facilitate legal immigration.
Not that all of them have been able to stick around, though. Last year the White House was forced to fire Trump speechwriter Darren Beattie, after media outlets reported he sat on a conference panel with a number of white nationalists back in 2016. What makes the firing particularly interesting is that one of those panelists was someone named Peter Brimelow—the founder of VDARE. Beattie got canned for that association, but the rest of the Trump administration continues.